The Question of Lay Analysis Revisited

This year marks a century since Freud’s short book on the question of lay analysis. Freud, who vigorously defended the practice of lay analysis, wished to keep psychoanalysis separate from the white lab coats of modern medicine. The neurotic, according to Freud—himself a medical doctor—was not “sick” in the same way a hospital patient suffers from illness; therefore analysis to him was not a branch of medicine, but a discipline in its own right. So, “lay”, in this context, means non-medical—not necessarily unqualified. Following Freud’s assertion that medical training has little to do with the practice of analysis, we must ask: what exactly is analysis? To which Freud elaborates for us:

Nothing occurs but talk. The analyst neither uses instruments, even for examination, nor writes prescriptions. If at all possible, he leaves the patient’s life and circumstances undisturbed during the treatment. This is of course not essential, and cannot always be managed. The analyst takes the patient at a fixed hour, lets him talk, listens to him, and talks to him and lets him listen (The Question of Lay Analysis, pp. 6).

So if analysis is largely a practice of “talk therapy”—as Freud seems to imply—then what makes one qualified? Freud resists answering this question directly. After all, how can one be trained to study something as elusive as the human soul? Still, Freud offers us some clues here. Though he does not lay out a particular training plan, he is quite adamant on what not to do, cautioning against the regurgitation of abstract theory, and instead encouraging engagement with one’s own psyche: 

When we instruct our own pupils in theoretical psycho-analysis we notice how little impression we make on them. They are as cool towards analytical teachings as to other abstractions which have been fed to them. Some perhaps wish to be convinced, but there is no sign that they are so. Now, we consider that everyone who wishes to treat others by analysis should first undergo an analysis himself. Only in the course of this ‘self-analysis’ (as it is mistakenly termed), when he actually experiences in his own person, or rather in his own psyche, the processes asserted by analysis to take place, does he acquire the convictions by which he will be later guided as an analyst (The Question of Lay Analysis, pp. 19).

In other words, Freud is suggesting that theory must be experienced on the personal level in order to actually be understood. “Cathexis”, “Repression”, “Denial”—these are all dead words unless they contain the breath of individual experience. How can the analyst claim authority on psychopathology unless he himself has experienced the subject of his theory? This is not to say that every analyst must have personally undergone the whole range of human psychopathology. Rather, the analyst must know their theory on a personal level. After all, Freud himself credited his ideas to his own self-analysis. His genius arose from analyzing his own psyche, and turning what he found into volumes of intellectual theory. But let us not reduce Freud’s self-analysis to mere introspection—the bulk of his enduring work hatched from the egg of his ventures into the depths of his own subconscious, a very different task than the modern notion of “self-awareness”.

Today’s psychological theory suffers from the same impersonality. The words of our modern institutions are no less inanimate: “Depression”, “insecure attachment”, “trauma”—what are these things, really? Unless experienced, they are merely abstractions. Again, we cannot expect today’s therapist to have experienced the entire DSM. But both the psychoanalyst and the modern therapist seem to suffer from the same problem: their practice is based solely on theory, abstracted from personal, human experience. Just as the analyst once gave his patients the label of “anal-retentive” to explain away a complex behavior pattern, today we throw such labels as “Major Depression” or "Generalized Anxiety”, thinking we have solved the problem. The problem, however, is that so long as the analyst—or therapist—adheres to the words of theory only, they are mistaking the map for the territory. They are practicing a bastardized form of lay-analysis, conflating theoretical knowledge with the skill of human connection.

If we are to develop a more comprehensive view of lay-analysis, we may turn to James Hillman and Archetypal Psychology. Hillman has said that psychology is always dependent on a root metaphor. In Freud’s time, the psyche was like an iceberg, only its gleaming white tip exposed to the light of day. Today the psyche—or mind, as we call it—is more comparable to a computer or a complex piece of machinery. But the psyche has not changed; our language has. Psychology is always changing, something that Freud seemed to recognize a century ago. That is, the root metaphor of psychology is not static. “We can only describe things in psychology with the help of comparisons”, says Freud. When we say the psyche is like the soul—or is the soul—we are offering a root metaphor that is far more personal than the abstractions of psychoanalysis or the medicalization of modern psychology.

Through this lens, when the analyst engages with the psyche, he is also engaging with the living interior, the soul. Similarly, when he engages in self-analysis, he is practicing something deeper than introspection. His self-analysis has little to do with the ego; rather, he is investigating his own soul. This is the prerequisite of his practice, and of competent lay-analysis. In other words, the reality of the psyche must first be experienced before one tries to heal the souls of fellow persons. This does not necessarily mean that a lay-analyst must himself be healed or whole; on the contrary, the more fragmented one is, the closer one is to soul. Pathology, as Hillman recognized, brings us closer to experiencing psychic reality, and therefore closer to the felt experience of “having a soul”. And a person who recognizes that he or she has a soul—and that others too have soul—is already engaged in lay-analysis. Attention to soul is in itself a practice of analysis—of unraveling and loosening the psychic interior. This is what Hillman’s language of “soul-making” implies: anyone who has soul can make soul, and every genuine conversation with other persons is also an act of lay-analysis, insofar as it mutually affects the soul of each person.

For what is analysis if not conversation that affects the deeper psychic center, the soul? “Talk therapy” is in fact the most human of all therapeutic endeavors, and sharing the tales of one’s soul already evokes the practice of psychology. Anyone capable of having conversation that reaches the soul is already engaging in lay-analysis. They are qualified, perhaps even more so than the PhDs, LPCs, LCSWs and all the other trained professionals who are trained in the language of the mind, not the soul. Professional training can hinder analysis as much as it can further it. It can lead to a rigidity of thought, and to literalism of the most grotesque kind. It can reduce the patient to their diseases, like a mechanic working on a malfunctioning engine. Compared to this kind of therapy, lay-analysis may have the upper hand.

But let us not conceive of the ability to affect the soul through words as an easy task. Such conversation requires not only a deep sensitivity to one’s own soul, but a knowledge of how to converse with the living interior of the other. Unlike theory, this is not something that can be taught in a classroom or training program. It must be experienced, and it must be practiced. We may simply call it human connection in its most genuine form—the intermingling of two souls. Once second nature to us, this practice has dissipated in the modern world. Who has a soul to share anymore? Many will recognize that conversation, among other things, has become soul-less—lacking depth. We complain that it is “surface level”, “shallow”, or “superficial”. It is “small talk”. Such conversation barely scratches the skin. It pokes and sticks, but does not penetrate. Perhaps this is why we are so quick to jump into therapy: modern society offers few outlets for conversing, and the soul needs real conversation. Conversation, after all, is the root of analysis. And the lay-analyst? Freud may have been right: let him practice his craft. Good conversation can do more for the soul than the best-trained doctor.